Food banks are struggling this year, and need our support. We give to the Greater Boston Food Bank, who distribute a staggering amount of food each year in Eastern Massachusetts.
In this wealthiest of countries, the scope of the hunger problem is hard to believe and is wrapped up in a host of related serious problems facing the poor and lower middle class. We desperately need better social policies and a more inclusive politics. We need housing assistance and fuel assistance, we need non-predatory banking and lending, we need short-term shelters and long-term shelters and a focus on health care rather than health insurance. But to those in our communities who are going to bed hungry every night and waking up hungry every morning, the food banks offer a lifeline.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
That time of year
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2 comments:
Interesting article in the Washington Post about the futility of food banks, written by the former director of Connecticut's Hartford Food System (food bank):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/16/AR2007111601213.html
Thank you for pointing out that article by Mark Winne. He sees energy and money going to feed the hungry and wishes that it would instead go to end poverty so that the demand at food banks did not keep growing. He’s right, of course, that people are hungry because they are poor. But the futility of food banks at curing poverty or at reducing hunger over time does not mean that food banks are not doing the necessary work now of feeding the hungry. I’ve never given money to a food bank hoping that I was thereby curing poverty. I’ve given money to a food bank hoping that I was helping to provide food now to someone who is hungry now. Food banks have in no way lessened or diverted my interest in economic and social justice. And I fundamentally disagree with Winne’s Reaganesque assertion that we only perpetuate poverty by providing safety nets.
George Jones, who works in your neck of the woods, wrote a detailed and important rebuttal. One key point that he makes is that direct-service providers and civic activists are not opponents the way that Winne implies. Agencies can provide services and push for change. People can give to food banks and work to end poverty.
A fascinating Christmas Day article on 10 Zen Monkeys discussed (among many other things) the tendency of non-profits to view their rivals as enemies. On the local arts council, I’ve seen someone very concerned that we would be taking money away from other local arts organizations if we solicited donations, because she sees the donor pool as a very limited and tapped-out resource. I think Winne makes both of those mistakes, thinking of the dollars that food banks receive as dollars that won’t go to structural improvements in our society and taking a Highlander-style approach to the world of non-profits.
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